A bill in­tro­duced in the Sen­ate aims to close a cus­toms “loop­hole” that the phar­ma in­dus­try has had on its radar as a po­ten­tial way to mit­i­gate tar­iffs.

The mea­sure by Sen. Bill Cas­sidy (R-LA) seeks to stop use of a lit­tle-known trade prin­ci­ple called the "first sale rule." That rule al­lows com­pa­nies to re­duce the val­ue of a prod­uct de­clared at US cus­toms, sub­stan­tial­ly low­er­ing the tar­iff du­ty they would have to pay. The bi­par­ti­san bill would en­sure im­porters pay du­ties based on the ac­tu­al com­mer­cial val­ue of the im­port­ed prod­uct, ac­cord­ing to a Wednes­day press re­lease.

No­vo Nordisk is ramp­ing up its foot­print in Ire­land with a planned ex­pan­sion of its Athlone fac­to­ry to make its We­govy pill, the com­pa­ny con­firmed to End­points News.

The Athlone site will sup­ply the pill to mar­kets out­side of the US, No­vo said, with­out pro­vid­ing de­tails on how much it was in­vest­ing or when the ex­pan­sion will be com­plet­ed.

The Dan­ish drug­mak­er’s We­govy pill ver­sion was launched last month and flew off the shelves, with pre­scrip­tion num­bers in­creas­ing by rough­ly 500% in the pill’s sec­ond week. An­a­lysts re­main cau­tious, not­ing that a week’s num­bers don't equal a trend

Fur­ther, No­vo won't dom­i­nate the oral GLP-1 space for long: Ri­val Eli Lil­ly is ex­pect­ed to launch its com­peti­tor pill or­for­glipron in this year's sec­ond quar­ter. Lil­ly has al­ready poured bil­lions in­to its or­for­glipron man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print, com­mit­ting to build fac­to­ries in Texas and Al­aba­ma.

HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. re­peat­ed claims Mon­day that the threat of tar­iffs and Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's "per­son­al in­ter­ven­tion" have pushed Eu­ro­pean coun­tries to raise drug prices. While that's not backed up by any cur­rent Eu­ro­pean-wide da­ta, phar­ma ex­ecs are ex­pect­ing prices to rise there.

"The Eu­ro­peans were very good at ne­go­ti­at­ing," Kennedy said in re­marks to the right-lean­ing non­prof­it Her­itage Foun­da­tion. He said Trump called him and CMS Ad­min­is­tra­tor Mehmet Oz — some­times in the mid­dle of the night and "al­most an­gry" — to get the so-called most fa­vored na­tion deals done and to use "tar­iffs to force the Eu­ro­peans to raise their drug prices."

Chi­nese pros­e­cu­tors have charged two of As­traZeneca’s for­mer se­nior em­ploy­ees with il­le­gal trade, un­law­ful col­lec­tion of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, and med­ical in­sur­ance fraud, the com­pa­ny said this week.

As­traZeneca dis­closed the charges in its fourth-quar­ter earn­ings an­nounce­ment on Tues­day. The Fi­nan­cial Times re­port­ed Wednes­day that one of those em­ploy­ees is Leon Wang, for­mer head of As­traZeneca’s Chi­na busi­ness.

End­points News is ma­jor­i­ty-owned by the FT, but op­er­ates in­de­pen­dent­ly. As­traZeneca did­n't re­spond to re­quests for com­ment in time for pub­li­ca­tion.

As­traZeneca's Chi­na sub­sidiary was al­so charged with un­law­ful col­lec­tion of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion and il­le­gal trade, the com­pa­ny said. But it added that pros­e­cu­tors made no al­le­ga­tions that the sub­sidiary re­ceived an il­le­gal gain in con­nec­tion with the in­for­ma­tion col­lec­tion charge.

One day af­ter bump­ing out CEO Paul McKen­zie, Aus­tralia’s CSL re­vealed what he left be­hind: de­clin­ing prof­it and a $1.1 bil­lion hole due to low­er US vac­cine de­mand and in­creased gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion.

CSL an­nounced McKen­zie would re­tire im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the board “rec­og­nized he didn’t have the skills that we want­ed for the fu­ture,” chair­man Bri­an Mc­Namee said Tues­day. The com­pa­ny has faced a tu­mul­tuous few years with failed spin­offs, head­count re­duc­tions and site clo­sures.

Net prof­it for the last six months of 2025 crashed by 81% and to­tal rev­enue dropped 4% to $8.3 bil­lion, CSL said Wednes­day. The com­pa­ny will take $1.1 bil­lion in im­pair­ment charges this year, most of it in the first half. Even with the head­winds, CSL main­tained its guid­ance for fis­cal 2026, pro­ject­ing rev­enue growth of 2% to 3%.

The UK is "ab­solute­ly" still an at­trac­tive place for in­vest­ment by man­u­fac­tur­ers, Fu­ji­film Biotech­nolo­gies CEO Lars Pe­tersen told End­points News in an in­ter­view, as the con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er opens its new­ly ex­pand­ed fa­cil­i­ty in Teesside, Eng­land.

Last year, a num­ber of large phar­ma com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Mer­ck, As­traZeneca and Eli Lil­ly, pulled out or paused UK in­vest­ments, crit­i­ciz­ing the gov­ern­ment for not pri­or­i­tiz­ing the life sci­ence sec­tor and mak­ing the coun­try an un­at­trac­tive place to do busi­ness.

That out­flow has­n't im­pact­ed CD­MOs down­stream, Pe­tersen said. “We have not seen pres­sure from cus­tomers say­ing: ‘Hey, we would not uti­lize your fa­cil­i­ty in the UK,’ not at all. We see a lot of in­ter­est in our fa­cil­i­ty,” he said.